captainholysoulstudent-blog

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Psychology in Your Life

This website will be dedicated for my Psychology in your life project given to all intro to psychology students at Fleming college. I am currently enrolled in Customs Border Services program at Fleming College. I believe getting a better understanding of the human psyche will benefit me in further schooling as well as my career. The concepts I decided to do my assignment on are id, ego, superego, trait theory (OCEAN), all intertwine with my everyday life in one way or another.

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Id, Ego, Superego

ID (it)

According to Sigmund Freud the id is the personality component made of the unconscious psychic energy that works to satisfy your basic urges, needs and desires. The id demands immediate gratifications of needs. It is all the biological components of personality present at birth. This includes the sex instinct, and the aggressive instinct. The id in impulsive, unconscious and the selfish part of our psyche. When a child is first born it is nothing but an id. Later the ego and superego develop.

Ego (i)

The ego is 'that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.' (Freud 1961, p. 25)

The ego is there to mediate the id and the external word. Essentially the ego works with reason and the id is chaotic and unreasonable. Think of the ego as the id's older sibling, it works according to reality and works out realistic ways to satisfy the id demands. id, the ego is concerned with devising a realistic strategy to obtain pleasure. The ego often compromising or postponing satisfaction to avoid negative consequences of society. Usually the ego is to weak compared to the id and all it can do is try to push the id in the right direction. If the ego fails when attempting to use reality to tame the id, anxiety is experienced.

Superego (above i)

The superego is the parent of the id and ego. It combines the values and morals of society which funny enough, is learned from ones parents and the others around the child. The superego develops around the ages of three and five. It's job is to control the id's impulses, emphasis on ones society looks down on. Such as sex and aggression. It also exists to turn the ego onto more moralistic goals rather than realistic ones. The conscience and ideal self are the two systems of the superego. For conscience, if the ego gives into the id's demands, the superego will make you feel bad through guilt. The ideal self is what it sounds like, it is the picture of how you should be. It represents career goals, how you treat other people, and behave within society.

Id, Ego, Superego, and Me

Id, ego, and superego are apart of everyone's lives. Whether we know about them or not.

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Trait Theory (OCEAN)

What is Trait Theory?

If you’ve ever asked yourself who you are, what makes you you essentially you are questioning Eysencks theory of personality. Its an approach to the study of the human personality. Trait theorists are interested in the measurements of traits, which can be defined as patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion (Saul Kassin, 2003) Traits are stable over time and vastly differ across individuals. An example would be some people are outgoing where some people are not. In some theories traits are something a person either has or doesn’t but in many other traits there are parallels as extraversion vs introversion, neuroticism vs stability and psychoticism vs socialization. A person can fall anywhere on these scales depending on the individual. These dimensions were coined by Eysencks theory. A theory similar to these dimensions is Raymond Cattells statistical process known as 16PF. 16PF is sixteen generated dimensions of human personality traits. The Big Five personality traits is a model is based on common descriptors of personality. When a statistical technique is applied to a personality survey data, some words used to describe aspects of personality are often applied to the same person. Someone can be described as conscientious is more likely to be described as always prepared rather than messy.  This theory is based therefore on the association between words but not on neuropsychological experiments. This theory uses descriptors of common language and therefore suggests five broad dimensions commonly used to describe the human personality and psyche. The five factors have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, often represented by the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. Evidence of this theory has been growing for many years, beginning with the research of D. W. Fiske (1949) later other researchers including Norman (1967), Smith (1967), Goldberg (1981), and McCrae & Costa (1987). The Big Five trait theory is the theory of focus on this assignment.

OCEAN

Openness(Iris Rebelo)- Openness on the Big Five dimension trait theory scale, is the hippies of the world. The people who are laid back, creative, imaginative, and original. They are the people you would be able to go on a road trip with and have a good time without worrying about anything else. People on the low end of this trait are conventional, conservative, and aren’t curious. My long time friend Iris reminds me of this trait because she’s big into spirituality and nature. She’s very intune with her emotions and you could talk to her about anything for hours.

Conscientiousness(Sam Whitney)-Conscientiousness relates to impulsive tendencies. Along with being impulsive, people that fall higher on the scale would be considered well organized, punctual, hardworking and willingness to learn.

Extroversion(Megan Roth)- Someone who falls on the extroversion side of the scale would be considered an outgoing person, talkative, active, and affectionate. Someone who scores low on this spectrum would be quiet, passive, reserved, and typically considered a loner. One of my roommates at Fleming College is an RA, and typically when you think of an RA you think of someone with a larger than life personality. And that’s what she has. Shes very easy to get along with and likable.

Agreeableness (Myself)- I see myself in all of the OCEAN traits but I think the one I identify with the most is agreeableness. I don’t think this theory was made to force people into categories, I believe everyone is a little bit of all of OCEAN. My friends would describe me as being trusting, good natured, and soft hearted. I spend a lot of my free time volunteering at local animal and homeless shelters.

Neuroticism- I think this is the worst component on the spectrum, it is associated with emotional instability. Sigmund Freud originally used the term neurosis to describe mental distress, emotional suffering, and inability to cope with the normal demands of life. (“The ‘Big 5’ Aspects of Personality”) Another one of my roommates, her name is Emily has clinical anxiety and depression. She would fall on the higher end of this scale and I spend most of my down time trying to comfort her.

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Distress and Eustress

Distress

Psychological distress is a broad term used to describe unpleasant emotions that effect your level of functioning. To put in other words psychological discomfort that interferes with your day to day activities. The result of distress can result in negative views of the environment, others, and yourself. Sadness, anxiety, distraction, symptoms of mental illness are all manifestations of psychological distress. With that being said, everyone can experience distress in varying ways. We can think of psychological distress as a continuum with ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ at opposing ends. As we continue to experience different things, we travel back and forth on the continuum at different times throughout our lives. Some causes of psychological distress are Cancer and other medical illness, Divorce, Starting a new job, Infertility, Mental illness.

Eustress

Much like myself, most people like to say they work better when they are put under some stress. There is some truth to this. We can benefit from stress and it can actually help improve our lives and performance. Any type of stress is going to put a strain on our body. Eustress is not simply a different type of stressor, but it’s also that positive reaction to stress that generates within us a desire to achieve and overcome a challenge. While some events can provoke a good type of excitement and psychological arousal – say winning the lottery for example – our perceptions of a stressor are what determine if we are feeling distress or eustress.

Distress vs eustress

The example I am going to provide to differentiate disress and eustress is you’ve just won the lottery. You quit your job, buy a brand new car, and travel the world for a while. You can imagine nothing but happiness for the rest of your life. Until, your relatives start calling you. Ones you’ve never even talked to, asking for money and to fix their problems. Organizations suddenly find your number and begin calling you, asking for donations, you have new different things to worry about when tax time comes along. And amist all of this, you’re feeling torn on what you should do and who you can help while still keeping you best future in mind. These new worries start keeping you up at night and you’re having trouble eating. You constantly have this feeling in your stomach because you can’t stop worrying about this new found stress you’ve run into. This wouldn’t be considered good stress. Consider someone else won the lottery and with this new found fortune he starts creating his life into how he’s always wanted it to be. People are asking him for money, but he knows how he wants to help and distribute his money and sticks to it. He hires tax consultants, assistants, and he starts his own business. He goes to sleep each night happy and imagining new challenges to overcome. The strains from winning the lottery are bringing out the best in him. The first man is an example of distress, and the second is an example of eustress. Eustress isn’t a better type of stress, it’s just a better reaction to stress. It’s about perceiving challenges rather than obstacles.

How they correspond within my life

Both eustress and distress coincide within my life. Every single day. Before psychology I wasn’t aware of the stress I was feeling had an actual name to them. I feel eustress more in my life than I do distress. Eustress is most prominent when I’m taking a test, particularly a computers test and I get to the first question and I already know this test is going to be hard. Instead of getting discouraged, this stress makes me try harder and push through the test until the end. I would rather take a failing grade than a zero. As stated in my proposal, moving to Peterborough put a huge stress on me. I became anxious, I stayed in my room most of the time, and this was beginning to bring down my grades as well as my mental health. But a couple weeks passed and I realized no one here is out to get me, this is supposed to be the best years of your life and you’re working towards building up your future. After I was finally got settled my grades picked up and I was happy in the situation I was currently in.